


A Shield Against the Cold

by EHyde



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4802228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EHyde/pseuds/EHyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zeno keeps his king safe and warm while he’s sick. (note: this takes place fairly early in Hiryuu's reign, it's not meant to be when he's dying or anything sad like that. don't want to scare you away)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shield Against the Cold

“King?” Zeno, carrying a tray of tea, stepped into King Hiryuu’s chambers, but Hiryuu was nowhere in sight. “My king?” Then he noticed the open door to the balcony, and sighed. “My king,” he said, stepping outside, “you’re sick. You should be inside, where it’s warm!”

Hiryuu, lying flat on his back on the stone floor, looked up at Zeno and smiled. “Nonsense!” he said. “The fresh air will do me more good than that stuffy room.”

Zeno paused. That … sounded reasonable, but … “Is that right?” he asked. “To be honest, King, I don’t remember the things you’re supposed to do when you’re sick.”

Then Hiryuu sat up, his expression suddenly serious. “I’m sorry, Zeno, I shouldn’t tease.” He sighed. “I’m sure the doctor would tell me to stay inside, too,” he said. “But I wanted to look up at the heavens as I slept.”

Zeno set the tray down by Hiryuu’s side, then ran back into the room, grabbing a heavy blanket off the king’s bed. “You should put this underneath you! The floor’s too cold!” As Hiryuu smiled and repositioned himself, Zeno poured two cups of tea, then sat down beside his king, whose gaze had returned to the skies once more. “Is this because of what happened with the doctor earlier?”

It was a little thing, or, it should have been. The palace doctor, preparing medicine for the king, had casually asked if Hiryuu hadn’t experienced this disease in childhood. An innocent enough question, on the surface—after all, it was a common ailment; Zeno could remember when half the children in his village had come down with it at once, and for someone to grow to adulthood without contracting it would unusual. But to ask it of King Hiryuu—the four dragons had frozen in place, then turned on the doctor. “King Hiryuu descended from the heavens,” Abi had said. “You ask an impossible thing.”

“… of course,” the doctor had replied, with an expression that said, plain as day,  _we’re all grown men here, so let us do away with the fairy tale,_  but he wisely refrained from speaking further. And Hiryuu, of course, had defused the situation by simply smiling and answering that no, he’d never had this sickness before.

“Hakuryuu wants to dismiss him,” said Zeno. “If his disbelief upsets you this much …”

“No, no, no!” Hiryuu protested. “That man is a good doctor. And I think it’s good for doctors to be atheists, don’t you?” Zeno sometimes didn’t understand his king at all. How could an actual god—albeit in human form—think it was a good thing for men to doubt his divinity? “After all, heaven can’t provide the answers they seek.” He sighed, sipping the tea Zeno had poured. “I suppose it just made me a little homesick. Did you notice, Zeno—men have come from every corner of the land to help me build this kingdom. They choose to leave their homelands behind, but when they’re here, they always seek out others from the land of their birth.” It was such an ordinary thing that Zeno hadn’t noticed, particularly. “To share memories of home, I suppose.”

And Hiryuu had no one to share those memories with. Even Zeno, who had once heard the voices of the gods, couldn’t relate. “Can you tell me what it was like, King?” he asked. “To be a god in the heavens?”

“It was …” He gazed upward. “Something the human mind can’t comprehend.”

“Right,” said Zeno, looking away. It was too much to presume that this was something his king could share with him.

“No, no, Zeno, that’s not—” Hiryuu reached for Zeno’s hand, his touch warm. “I  _am_  human now, and words—words have a power. If I try to put it in human words … I’m afraid I might lose it.” — _oh_. Zeno squeezed his king’s hand in his, then, hesitantly, shifted himself a little closer, stretching out his arm across the former god’s back, resting his head against Hiryuu’s shoulder. He remembered the times that Hiryuu had drawn him into a close embrace, the warmth of his king’s body wrapped around his own, but Zeno had never before been the one to—did he presume too much? But Hiryuu didn’t seem surprised, or bothered, by the close touch. “It does all start to sound like a story, doesn’t it?”

Zeno looked up at his king. “Your brothers in heaven remember you,” he said. “After all, they sent us to stay by your side in their place.”

Hiryuu gave a little half-smile. “So they did.” He put his arm across Zeno’s shoulder. “Can I whisper a secret to you? My cute little Zeno is far better company than dull brother Ouryuu ever was.”

That—that wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He was—they all were—just stand-ins for the real thing, weren’t they? He pulled away. “King, the medicine’s making you delirious.”

Hiryuu frowned. “The doctor said it wouldn’t …”

“Then don’t say things like that!”

“Oh? But it’s true, though…”

“You were just talking about how much you miss your home!”

Hiryuu turned his gaze, in all seriousness, to Zeno. “There are things on earth I would miss just as much,” he said. “If not more.” He stretched out, lying back down on the blanket now that his tea was finished. “Will you stay here tonight?” Zeno paused, then nodded. He would do anything his king asked of him, of course, but moreso, he wanted this.

Lying at Hiryuu’s side, gazing up at the stars together, he asked, “so, was Ouryuu a big brother? Or a little brother?” Hiryuu chuckled. “Or … do gods not have a childhood, for that to matter? Are they just … always the same?”

Hiryuu took so long to reply that for a moment Zeno thought he had fallen asleep. “Always the same,” Hiryuu said, finally. “To grow and change … is a human thing. Zeno, I’m …” But whatever it was he was going to say faded into silence as the king pulled Zeno close, wrapping his arms, wrapping his body around him as if to shield Zeno from whatever it was that remained unspoken.

“…My king?”  _I’m supposed to be the one protecting you, King._  And as Hiryuu fell asleep like that, outside, sick, Zeno thought,  _this time, I can, a little._  He stretched himself over Hiryuu’s body, a shield between his king and the cold night air, gathering the blanket around them both as far as it would reach.

When the dawn came, Zeno was cold and damp with morning dew, but his king was warm and dry.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm [fallenwithstyle](http://fallenwithstyle.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you'd like to come say hi!


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